282 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
of great beauty, and on the top of this stem Tribolo placed a bronze female figure a yard and 
a half high to represent Horence ... of which figure he made a most beautiful model 
wringing the water out of her hair with her hands.” Many critics pronounce this figure to 
have been executed by Giovanni Bologna. 
The villa was attacked in 1364 by the Pisans with their English and German allies in 
the course of one of their chronic wars with the Florentines. It then belonged to the Brunelleschi, 
and the young sons of the house made a gallant defence and succeeded in repulsing the enemv. 
'Phey were a different family to that ot the great architect Filippo Brunelleschi. The Strozzi 
succeeded as owners, and on their exile the property came to the Medici. Cosimo I, 
when wishing to escape from 
the cares of State, passed most 
of his time at Petraja. A 
little villa on the hillside above 
La Topaja was lent by him 
to Varchi, the historian, who 
entertained all the notable 
visitors to Florence of the 
day, not least the celebrated 
courtesan Tullia of Arragon, 
one of those ladies of the late 
Renaissance whose wise and 
witty converse and rare beauty 
and accomplishments made her 
a personage in the society of 
the great and learned. Her 
picture by Bonvicino at Brescia 
shows us the lovely woman to 
whom poets addressed such 
passionate verses — the owner 
of those 
beautiful eyes, 
Glancing eyes, loving eyes and dear, 
More brilliant than the sun, and than 
the stars more fair, 
of which Muzio writes. 
Cosimo’s son, Cardinal 
Ferdinando di Medici, commis- 
sioned Buontalenti to enlarge 
and improve the villa, but the 
historian Scipione Ammirato,to 
whom the Cardinal gave an 
apartment at Petraja so that 
he might write his history 
of Florence in retirement, is 
persuaded that the tower was 
not touched and is the same 
that was assaulted by the 
Pisan army under the command 
293. — A FOUNTAIN OF COLOURED MARBLE IN GROTTO UNDER John Plawkwood, in the 
UPPER TERRACE AT CASTELLO. fourteenth centurv. Ferdinando 
and his wife Christine of 
lyorraine lived here and in 159S received the Sultan’s Ambassador when he came to negotiate 
about the trade with the Levant, so important in this centurv. F. M. P. 
Lying about three miles due north of Florence, this pair of Medicean villas have surroundings 
somewhat different to those at Poggio Cajano. Thev lie, one above the other, in the valley of 
